The Sims 3: Relationships and Households

I found that my Sims 3 FAQ page was getting a little long and the word count a bit heavy, so I have decided to split it up into separate pages on particular subjects. This page is about relationships and households. I have tried to put the questions in a form of chronological order. PLEASE NOTE I CANNOT HELP YOU WITH THE SIMS 3 ON IPHONE, ANDROID OR ANY CONSOLES, THIS IS PC ONLY.

Woo! Lesbians!

A teenage sim has a boyfriend, she has grown up, he’s still a teen. I don’t want their relationship to degrade, what can I do?Indeed, that’s the way the world works, as in the real world too, people aren’t all the same age. You have a couple of choices. The first is to wait until the younger one ages up, which isn’t normally more than a few days. Or secondly, you can try the Awesomemod, which allows romantic relationships between teenagers and young adults/adults (probably elders too). My advice is, if you download it, to read all of the instructions and take note that it may conflict with other mods. It wouldn’t work at the same time as the teen marriage/pregnancy mod for me.

On The Sims 3, what’s this simultaneous boyfriends thing about?I’m a little miffed as to why you cannot have simultaneous partners. There’s a lifetime achievement of having had 10 boyfriends/girlfriends, but you cannot have more than one declared boyfriend/girlfriend at any one time. Sure, you can fall in love with other sims while you have a boyfriend/girlfriend, but you cannot “go steady” with them, which kind of sucks. In order to complete that lifetime wish you have to have become the boyfriend/girlfriend of 10 other sims, having just been romantically linked is not good enough.

In The Sims 3, can you get family to be romantically involved?Part of me wants to say “unfortunately not…”, but that might sound a bit dodgy. You see, I had this crazy idea for a couple of my sims. A young dude’s father died, but he was brought back to life by this young dude’s Mother. This pair didn’t get on, so the Father went off and had children with someone else. Eventually he moved his younger charge and their children in with him, and he also married her, thus making the young woman this young dude’s step-mother (she was younger than him). I figured, that when I sent this guy back to the netherworld she would be a widow (thus making their marriage over) and that she would be able to have a relationship with the young dude (her step-son). Now, that’s not entirely unheard of in real life, particularly so as she didn’t “bring him up” as it were, he was already a teenager. But they cannot have a relationship as he sees her as his step-mother. Family ties are much tighter and far better written on The Sims 3. In short, not they can’t be romantically involved. A few generations apart and they can (I had two get hitched and have kids who were related through a great-great-great-great grandfather.).

Can a woman propose to another woman on sims 3?Of course. There is proper gay marriage in The Sims 3. Once the option of “Propose Marriage” comes up, you’re away. They’ll do it in the same way as heterosexuals: get down on one knee, produce a ring and then wait for the answer. The same goes for men.

Do you have a sim that won’t move in, or who cannot propose?This has happened to me, and was no end of frustration. I had a sim who had no commitment issues. He had a girlfriend who did have commitment issues. I spammed both the friendly and romantic actions to try to instigate at least the “move in” option. He had to move in with her, rather than her moving into the active household as I had no room there. I’ve had sims in the past with commitment issues who have gone on to propose to and marry other sims, no problem there. This one just wasn’t playing ball. Eventually I had to split and then merge the households. On the main menu, find the “Edit Town” option. Choose the button to split a family, choose who is going to move out. Once that’s done, choose to merge families. You can now merge the person or people that you just split out with the people whom you wish for them to live with, so long as there is space in that household. Simple as. Well, a bit annoying to be honest, but it works.

What happens on The Sims 3 if someone rejects a marriage proposal?Err, they reject it, and that’s pretty much the end of it. I had one woman whose girlfriend had the Insane trait and she kept asking this crazy woman to marry her. She asked about four times and was rejected every single time. As the moodlet says when it occurs, they’ll get over it and can try again but the humiliation gets no better.

How do I set up a wedding on The Sims 3?
This applies if you are marrying someone into the active household. Of course, you need to start out by making sure that you have two sims who are engaged. Then, you need to be certain that there is enough room in that family for them to move in. To get the wedding started, get the person in the active household to use their phone to “Throw Party”. A dialogue box will come up asking you to choose some variables. These include the time of the party, the type of dress, and the type of party (you have a choice of Birthday, House, Wedding and Funeral I believe). You will also need to choose guests. Once you’ve set all of those and clicked okay, it’s just a matter of waiting until the time counts down and your party is near. When the guests arrive and you’re ready, get the two who are to be married to marry each other. I believe that option is under the Romantic interactions. Once they’re married, the other person will move in.

In the Sims 3, can you have an open marriage?
Err…no. Bit of a shame really, but if you can handle Mods then there are some no jealousy options in the AwesomeMod.

In The Sims 3, how do you move teenagers out or in with one another?From what I can tell, you can’t. It would appear that the teen pregnancy/marriage mod doesn’t work in the same way that it did for The Sims 2. In The Sims 2, about halfway through their teenage years they would suddenly become capable of certain adult interactions (such as marriage, moving out, and their job would switch to the adult career), however this doesn’t seem to happen with The Sims 3. Instead they have to wait until they get to the Young Adult stage before they can move out. However, you may be able to use the split and merge family option if you’re really desperate, but I haven’t tried it.

In The Sims 3, how do you move someone into your household?
There are a couple of ways to do this. First off, you could marry them if you’re into that, and of course if it’s a romantic relationship. Short of that, you should find that once their relationship (I believe romantic or otherwise) is high enough, then the option to “Ask to move in” should pop-up on one of the pie menus. Ask away and see what happens! But, do remember that you can only have a maximum of eight (8) sims on a lot, and if you’re not getting an option to move someone in, that may be why. If there isn’t already a hack available to enable more people on the lot, I’m sure there will be in the future. Also, if the person is in the family bin and there is room in the household you should be able to merge the families together.

In The Sims 3, how do you move out an entire household?This is not entirely removed from the previous answer. You need to get your sims to use a computer and choose “Move”. You’ll then get a box asking who to move and where to move to, you need to choose whether they are simply being evicted or moving to another lot. I believe there is a button that says something like “Lot” or “House”. Choose the place they’re moving to, and the people who are moving. Click on the tick, and you should be away!

On The Sims 3, if I marry someone with kids, do the kids move in too?You know, I have a funny feeling that it’s optional. When the new spouse goes to move in with the person that they’re marrying, a box should appear asking for you to select the people who move in. It may be that children have to, otherwise they would be left alone, however I wouldn’t be surprised if it was optional to include the children.

On the Sims 3 can I move in/somehow edit a family when someone is in the process of dying?
I know that might sound like a strange question, but I’ve had a hit from a similar one. It would appear that, as in previous versions of the game, nothing else can really happen while a sim is dying. You cannot move people in or out, actively get married or stuff like that. The death takes priority. I can’t quite remember what I was trying to get a sim to do, but he couldn’t do it while his step-mother was dying, so he had to wait until the Grim Reaper had put her into her grave before he could.

In the Sims 3 if you merge households will the surnames change?No they won’t. In The Sims 3 the surnames are rather more dynamic. If someone moves in to another house then their name will remain the same as it was before they move. However, if they marry someone and then move into the house owned by the person that they married their name will change. I have in fact seen houses where it may say something like “Kraft Household” on the map view, but no-one with the surname Kraft lives in the house.

In The Sims 3, can you cause other sims to break up?Why yes, yes you can. If you have a sim that is in a ‘relationship’ with another sim who is already attached to someone else, whether that be by marriage or otherwise, then yes you can ask the sim that’s in a relationship to break up with their partner. Remember kids…men never really leave their wives for their mistresses!

On The Sims 3 can you break up your own relationship?
I’ve already covered getting other sims to break up, but what I haven’t covered is breaking up your own relationship. It’s actually very simple. You have to start by turning things a bit sour. Of course, as with previous incarnations of The Sims when couples don’t talk to each other much or don’t WooHoo a lot their relationship begins to degrade. You can get sims to choose a mean social interaction which will be something like “Scare”, or “Argue”. I will admit that it’s easier if the instigator is Hot-Headed or Evil. If the sim on the receiving end didn’t like it, they will lose some relationship points. Keep doing those kind of nasty things to the other sim and eventually you’ll have an option appear that is “Break Up”. They then break up. Simple as.

How can I have more than 8 people in my household?If I remember correctly, this is now available as part of Awesomemod.

There is someone living in my household and I don’t want them to be, what can I do?You have two choices – first, you can get them to use the computer and choose the option to “Move”, or you can go through the “Edit Town” area in the main menu and forcibly move them elsewhere.

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323 thoughts on “The Sims 3: Relationships and Households”

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Hello, in my sims game I just want to control the mother, not the kids or husband. I want to keep them in my household but I just dont want to have to control them.. is there any cheats that you know of that will let me do this?

You’d have to do some more searching to find that out. If you’ve got a household, you’re in charge and control of that household and everyone in it. If you ensure that freewill is on/high then they’ll do a lot of things for themselves, but you can’t guarantee that they won’t interfere with things that you are controlling or that they would definitely not die from starvation or an accident. Some may argue, if you didn’t want to control them, why have them? Otherwise, it’s likely you’ll have to move them out

If you have university (ON SALE NOW!!) installed, you can build apartments. Have the dad and the kids move out and be only the mom. Go into Edit mode and place them into an apartment. Go back into live mode and make the mom move into the same apartment. That’s how I do it!

I created a household and decided to play another household for a while. When i went back and played my created household, my female sim had a boyfriend that I could not find on my map or invite over. When i called to invite, it just says that he is working and dosent know when he will be done..

So every time I play sims three I am automatically given a new sim during some point in the game, like a new sims with dreams and no skills. How can I stop this? Its annoying and it gets difficult managing so many sims at a time

Hi, I’ve been wondering recently what happens to the pre-made families in a town once all the members grow up and die? I’ve found a list of all the pre-made sims in the town but what happens when all these have died? Do they simply repeat or are there combinations that the game will pick for these sims to go on and have future families etc. Hope this makes sense!

Oooh, I think it’s a bit random really. Some of them in my games seem to have gone on for what feels like forever. Others have naturally left the town, others have simply died out. I think it might depend on the city/town dynamic as to what happens overall. What I do know, is that the town is always populated to some level, even if the game just creates new families.

I made two separate families and basically I made a adult (male( have his own place, then the other family have there own place, I created a dad(male) two daughters and one daughter has a son. I want the male in the other house become the dad, I have changed last names of both and I dont want the other male and young daughter to marry then the man be a step-dad, please say there is a way to make him the dad.

does having a full household affect if i can get one sims to marry someone out of the household i have been trying for a while now and i am not sure if it is because of the full house hold or not and do not want any of my sims to leave this household any time soon until married so i know i can continue the family tree

Hello – yes having a full lot will affect that because the game assumes that if you’re to marry two sims then they will automatically live in the same household. If there’s no space, it won’t give you the option

If you have university, there is an app for the phone with a high enough social media skill (5, I think) that lets you choose. Or, Supernatural has a potion that can make them instantly in love. Or you could use testingcheatsenabled true and drag their relationship to full and then start flirting…

There are non-cheat ways to do it that are very effective. Raise your sims Social Networking skill and you can use your smart phone to modify relationships. You could also get the Master of Seduction lifetime reward for one of them and their romantic advances will always be successful.

Hi. I have a question. I want delete relationship between father and child. Specifically I’ve two familys and each have one pair (boy and girl ). I want that girl in first pair’ll reveal her boyfriend with boy in second pair, but when a child’ll born will appear a stamp stepson and stepfather. I wouldn’t it! I want delete or change this stamp. Is there a mod for it? Thanks for your help

Hello. Yes, I believe you can. When you’re creating them in Create a Sim, just don’t select that they have a familial relationship. There may even be an option there for them to just be room mates, but it has been a long time since I created a family that way

Get what to go away? I’m a little confused by the question. Is there a chance one of them has moved into a different age group so the romantic interactions are no longer available? Has their relationship deteriorated to the point that they don’t have the option any more and you have to raise the relationship score? If you don’t want them to have anything to do with one another anymore, just ignore him. Eventually the relationship will disappear.

In my sims 3 university game, my sim met a bf and dated all through college, but he finished before her, and then when I sent her back to college he was randomly added to her house hold in the university town, even though he had a degree and didn’t go to any classes. So I made him drop out. And they still dated what not. But when she returned home, he was added to her home household and now will not get the option propose. They say they are in the same age and everything, bf/gf, full relationship bar, irresistible, etc. I’ve tried everything moving him out, moving her out, modifying traits, breaking up. Now that they are broken up, they have full relationship bar, but he accepts romantic interaction, but she gets rejection moodlets with every interaction, and a just friends notification.
What do I do?
( I do not play with any mods)

Yeah I have been through that except with a ex boyfriend from university. In the end I just got a stranger and made him just like my ex.(with cheats) there’s nothing you can do really but if you have supernatural you can buy a cloning potion throw it at him then he clones then you can move him out and get steady with the clone. Sorry if its the only way. Sims should really fix that.
Hope this helped you.

I know this is old but it might help someone else in the future. I don’t know what the issue was to make marriage not an option for your couple but once you broke them up you must start their relationship anew by selecting “just be friends”. They will then stop being labeled “ex-boyfriend/girlfriend” and you can work back up to bf/gf and marriage.

Oh and I want to add: I’m guessing he’s the one who dumped her since she gets the rejection moodlet. She’s still hurt and pissed and that lasts at least 2 days (maybe indefinitely when interacting with him, I’m not really sure). So the “just be friends” option can or should be selected after that. Sooner and she’d probably not accept or get angry. At least that’s what I’ve read (I was tempted to break up my couple and get them back together but I didn’t want to risk permanent separation).

Hi hi – I think Young Adults and Adults can have relationships? I know I’ve got an elder an a young adult together. You should just be able to ask, or do the Edit Town move to get him into the household

Hmm. It sounds like they might have gone into the big bin that is all of the sims who live in the town and randomly appear. It can be quite hard to get them out of that. Do you still have a relationship with that sim (even just being able to telephone them)? If so, you might be able to get them back that way.

If not, have a look to see if there is a version of SimPE for the version of the game that you’re playing. From recollection, the last version of SimPE I used allowed you to see every sim in a town/neighbourhood and you could alter their relationship with other sims without any work in game.

When a sim disappears, yours or NPC, you can reset them (their motives, wishes, actions). I’ve read that works sometimes for making missing sims come back home or kicking out a guest or stopping a sim’s action glitch.

Ctrl+Shift+C
type–> testingcheatsenabled true
hit enter
type–> resetsim Name
Must be first and last name
hit enter!

Hi! I’ve had this weird glitch for a really long time… I have these two Young adult sim’s and for some weird reason my sim disappears. and the other one glitches out into a ‘Monster like Sim’ it’s really creepy! Also I have Sims 3 pet’s installed and my kitten turns into a Sim. (My sim is a female and when she turn’s into a ‘sim’ she turn’s into a male). I looked all over the internet (and google) to see if anyone has the same problem! But it’s just me. Please help! It happens to ALL of my sim’s! {Thank you}

so i had my young adult woman, she lived in a house of 7 with her new husband and i got both of them to move out but i kept the family as my active household. will the woman and the husband have babies without me switching to their household?

Okay, so my toddler dislikes her mother. Why? The mother took care of her as a baby. Once she was a toddler thier relationship stayed in red. Couldn’t fix it. So, once she became a child, I had the mother throw a potent jar of friendship at her (supernatural). This fixed the problem for a day or 2… except now they’re just acquaintances again. Why can’t they keep their relationship in green? Help!

The woman in my game died but came back because the grime reaper. She was married and had a job, but when she died and came back, she didn’t anymore. The marriage option won’t come back up anymore either. It’s just “fiancée” and they won’t get married. Idk why this happened.

Not sure I can help there – it’s not something I’ve ever come across, unless she’s not really come back as a whole person and more a ghost? Or, you have some mods affecting those kind of relationships.

Hi so I just got the late night game for sims and i have two sims in my household (girlfriend & boyfriend) one of my sims got bite by a vampire (the boyfriend) when I got home I tryed to make my sims communicate with each other but when I clicked on them it didn’t work and no options would come up! Both my sims can cumunicate with other sims just not each other!? I tryed reseting both of my sims but it didnt work!? Do u know how to fixs this!?

Unfortunately not, I’m rather lost with that one. Are you trying to make them communicate during the day outside? Your vampire won’t like that. Also, do you have any mods installed that might affect a cross species relationship?

I built a multi-family apartment building but how do i keep each families money seperate. I only want to play one apartment at a time.. but all the families show up together and there money was added together..

My sim is in a relationship with a guy, he had his own place and suddenly moved away to another city. Now i cant find him on the map or as a friend, so i cant end the relationship. I tried starting a new one with someone else but now i’m cheating on a guy that dosen’t even live in town. how do i fix that?

Not sure if this is covered elsewhere but this page came up in my search for an answer so, here’s hoping.

I’ve got a male Sim who is at the “romantic interest” phase with another Sim that he recently got pregnant. I moved her and their kid into his house, hoping it would help expedite to the marriage step. She’s been living there for a few days now and they’ve known each other for a while but I’ve gotten neither the “go steady” or “engagement” options so I’m not entirely sure what to do. I vaguely remember reading somewhere that there was a specific setup to get the go steady option to come up but I can’t remember and have been able to find it again.

Neither one of them are aleady in other relationships are they? Also, they don’t have totally incompatible traits (such as one good and one evil)? Apart from that, I can’t think of a reason why you wouldn’t be able to do it, unless there’s a problem with one of the characters.

Hi I’ve got a quick question and was thinking if there is a way to resolve it without the use of mods. I had a y/a (female) married to an adult male. They had a good relationship until having a child and now their relationship is degrading badly. I’m not to sure on what to do and I’ve been playing the sims for years. Have you got any advice on repairing their relationship to get them to actually want to interact again?

Hi there. In short, not really, apart from forcing them to interact. If you haven’t gone down the “apologise” route yet, then do so. I always found that apologising between sims helped to raise a relationship up to the point where they could have more normal interactions

is there another way to make two different sims related? like without the original create sims. i made a sim and started playing with her so i tryed making her a mom and i dont know how to add them. how would i be able to make them related? is there a mod i could use?

Have her get pregnant and have a kid would be the simplest way, unless you’re saying that you’ve already got two unrelated sims and you want them to be related? If that’s the case, you’ll need to use S3PE. I haven’t tried it for The Sims 3, but the version for Sims 2 allowed you to edit relationships and you could relate people who weren’t previously related. You can find S3PE here.

Hey so, I have a quick question: is there a way I can permanently save my created sims in a neighborhood? Because they keep showing up as families that I can move in even though I have already moved them into houses. Are the pre-made sims the only families that can be permanently saved?

Oh, that seems a bit strange – it’s been a good long while since I played, but I thought they disappeared from the bin when you moved them into a house. Are you able to play them properly after you’ve moved them in, and are you playing The Sims 3?

My sim is family orientated and wants a kid bur her fiance` is really annoying me because they are full relationship but whenever I click on ‘try for baby’ he gets mad and won’t do it so my sim has to start over until it says ‘extremely irresistible’ again.
Why doesn’t he want to have a child, I don’t think he has the ‘hates children’ trait because he has three children with his ex-wife.
???

I made a non-cheat family and they are kinda poor so I made the daughter, Eve, marry a man so she could move her family into a bigger house but she fell in love with a homeless man and they were in love so I made her marry him anyway. No one else seemed to like him very much so I kicked him out of the house (he is still married to Eve). When Eve went to his party the next day I found that he lived in a huge mansion so is there anyway I can move my whole family in with him without cheats? Also I want to sell the small house that they are living in now.

You can’t switch from her to anyone else? As in, you can’t move to play another family? That’s kind of how The Sims 3 works, you have one family at a time unless you mod the game. If you mean you cannot select any other active characters in the game, then I don’t know what’s up – never happened to me!

I’m not sure if this has been covered. My sim met her boyfriend at university and now is back home in monte vista. She keeps inviting her boyfriend to visit which is fine. I am wanting him to move in with her and when the option to move in finally came up I chose it. My problem is this. The window came up for people to move in and I only wanted him but I wasn’t able to click on the tick for it to happen. It said that there were insufficient funds for him to move. My only other option is to marry him and move in that way but i don’t want to do it this way. Any suggestions??

Oh, this I don’t know about. It sounds like you have other expansion packs which I don’t have that may affect it. I don’t know how University works as an expansion pack but it sounds logical that money would come into it when creating or amending a family for young adults like it maybe would in real life. Sorry.